It does not matter how harsh the punishment is. If the legal system and the police are inefficient, you will still have a lot of crimes.

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Actually, that's a bold-faced lie. It's a fact that countries which have the death penalty don't fare any better with criminal activity than countries which don't.

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Let's say I could save a certain number of lives by killing one of your children. How many lives would I have to save before it made it OK for me to kill your kid?


Merged posts.
~Mopiece

Besides, US has death penalty. It's just not used that often
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_ ... ment_in_the_United_States

@Theone

That is partially true. It's not give as punishment often, but it also greatly depends on the state that the crime was committed in if you'll get the death penalty or not.

Yeah, since some states don't have death penalty. So the worst that can happen to a criminal is life sentence.

Which, ya know, with all the coddling we do to prisoners probably isn't as bad as it should be.

I don't approve death sentence, but the prison life might as well be a bit more harsh.

Prisoners should work for their own food, medication, etc... etc... instead of living on the backs of the non-prisoners.

^- I agree with what Yannes says.

But Kleptin, just to make sure I wasn't wrong, I looked it up, and theres no international study that has show a reduction in either crime rates overall, violent crime, or murder that can be linked to the death penalty. The ONLY Country that has substantial data is the USA, so you're flat out wrong. Asian Countries which harbor the death penalty have far less crime than those who don't. Japan, Singapore, etc.

Google it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Japan

I like how they see it the same way I do, and their Country is thriving compared to the states.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri ... -crime-murders-per-capita

Many other Countries with DP that's recently been abolished also have low crime, instead most switched to life without parole. For example, China. I HEARD (This isn't a fact) that they only switched to life imprisonment because they like to use their prisoners as live organ donors & now they use them to sell on the black market.

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Asian Countries which harbor the death penalty have far less crime than those who don't. Japan, Singapore, etc.

Other countries don't have good police force. Consider Pakistan and India, along with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the murderers are rarely caught.

Let me give you an example, the rates of snatching are so bad here that we no longer report people forcing us to give them their mobile because they have a gun pointed on our forehead. Even if the punishment is death Penalty, it will not make any difference

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I'm confused, because this statement agrees with what Kleptin stated. You are stating that there's no study that shows crime goes down in places that have the death penalty.

@yannes: problem with that is that you'll inevitably have lawsuits of "abuse! inhumane conditions!"

So its probably cheaper to make sure those lifers have a pretty comfy life of comfort.

Was admitting there arent any studies but also informing him that BECAUSE there arent any he has no right to call me a liar. Its rude & ignorant.

Guys, I think this is getting off topic and frankly, it has turned into a fight. Calling each other ignorant and/or liars does not solve the argument

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I don't retract my statement at all. What you told, very simply put, is a lie. It is an untrue statement that you are trying to pass off as true, that's the definition of a lie. However, I did not call you a liar, did I? I simply said that your statement was a lie.

I agree it *would* have been rude and ignorant of me to call you a liar, because it would transgress social custom (rude) and rely on faulty assumptions with a lack of knowledge (ignorance) to claim that you make false statements all the time (liar).

However, that doesn't make your statement any less false, or any less a lie. There is and never has been a correlation drawn between the death penalty and crime rates.

If you tell me that you have an invisible winged unicorn in your room, I don't need to prove that the unicorn doesn't exist in order to say that your statement is false or intentionally misleading.

As for your example on Japan, that's an example of Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy, which I'm sure the statistics whiz KTC knows as the assumption that correlation implies causation.

Yes, Japan has some low crime rates, and Japan also has the death penalty. Guess what Japan also has? Sushi. Can we assume that crime rates are indirectly proportional to the concentration of sushi in a given country?

No.

Take a look at the statistics. Look at the countries which still have the death penalty. In terms of crime ranking per capita compared to other countries which have abolished it, they are all over the place. Higher, lower, comparable.

There's no relationship AT ALL.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777460.html
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri ... e-total-crimes-per-capita

Well tbh, I think you intentionally meant to offend me, otherwise you would have worded it less hostile. Maybe I offended you with my ignorance? Sorry that I was wrong, but you can check through my previous posts that I usually do double checks and have no problem admitting being wrong. The thing you didn't check about these countries is that they HAD the death penalty, and most haven't even been rid of it for 20 years yet.

I think death penalties have a relation with crime rates, because those criminals might afraid of that punishment. They'd definitely concerned if the laws are real explicit/strict about the death sentence's judgement. But there'd be a different story if the laws give their death judgement that easy escaping. Or that death penalty real is rare to use.

@kleptin:
what's the similarity between crimes and fish so they're put together? O.o

@shadowshed - There is no similarity, and that's the point Kleptin was trying to make. Just because 2 things exist in the same place/time/etc. doesn't mean one caused the other.

So, using the same argument, you can't say that if an area has the death penalty AND low crime rates, then the threat of death is lowering crime.

Some places have the death penalty and low crime, some have the death penalty and high crime, some have no death penalty and low crime. Because no extensive, conclusive study has been done, you can't really say, with any certainty, how these two things relate.

If you think crime in an area would go down if it had the death penalty, then you are probably just projecting your own (hypothetical) willingness to commit a crime with the threat of death hanging over your head.

The only thing that is proven to have an effect on crime is unemployment and poverty.

@argoyle:
but that doesn't mean that the death penalty really can't lower the crimes, does it?

@shadow- The truth is criminals are just as afraid of dying as 10 years in prison. The only thing criminals are afraid of is beonf caught. In some cases, people kill for money to feed their kids. Even if they die, the money reaches their kids.

Look at suicide bombers. They kill themselves

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There's just no data to support or disprove that. There are many states in the US that have the death penalty, but murders occur every year. If someone has the mindset to kill, they aren't really worrying about the repercussions.